IMAGINA Experiment

From 5 December to 31 May 2024, the Serrería Belga Cultural Space is hosting an exhibition that brings together the work of great names in national and international photography, mostly from the Andalusian Centre of Photography. It is a selection of images, mostly unpublished in Madrid, taken 30 years ago by photographers ahead of their time.

Curated by Professor Jesús Segura, the exhibition includes 49 images by 16 photographers who originally took part in the IMAGINA Project. This public initiative brought together great photographers from all over the world in Almería in the early 1990s, an event that marked the origin of today's Andalusian Centre of Photography.

Visitors can see the work of Spanish photographers Ouka Leele (the first female photographer to participate in the project), Manuel Falces, Josep Vicent Monzó, Cristina García Rodero, Carlos Pérez Siquier and Toni Catany, and international artists Martin Parr, Sarah Moon, Douglas Keats, Sibylle Bergemann, René Burri, Krzysztof Pruszkowski, Arno Fischer, Ferdinando Scianna, William Klein and Mimmo Jodice.
 It also reveals a little-known facet of Henri Cartier-Bresson, who contributed drawings rather than photographs.

The selected works have a clear documentary aesthetic and disturbing poetics. They are grouped into three categories: Ecologies of the Image, with photographs that explore the complex relationship between actors and the natural environment; Social Criticism, which includes snapshots that prompt reflection on community relationships and their concerns; and Collective Memory, which brings together photographs that explore the memory that transcends individual memory and is constructed in need of social interaction, culture, shared tradition and common history.

Image credits:

• © Serie Ouka Leele
• © Obras Carlos Pérez Siquier 
• © Sarah Moon
• © Martin Parr
• © Cristina García Rodero